by G. M. R.
While most people today in America might not mention stencils when discussing graffiti, the rise of unsanctioned public stencil artwork correlates with the rise of graffiti in the 1970s. Cities like Baltimore, Maryland, New York, London, and Paris became the new centers for public artwork, and it is no coincidence that graffiti blossomed in age of political and social strife (Howze). In the 1980s and 90s, graffiti became associated with hip-hop culture, especially in connection with music. The most popularized form of graffiti was “tagging,” or insignia done free-hand with spray paint. Stencils were virtually left out of this popularized graffiti, and this exclusion allowed stencil artists to remain anonymous and outside of the public’s outcry against graffiti as vandalism: “street stenciling has less in common with other graffiti, being more akin to the samizdat tradition of poster and sticker propaganda…while maintaining its low-tech immediacy and independence,” (Western Cell Division, 2). Unlike a scrawled nickname in sharpie, stencils could be beautiful, funny, clever, or just plain invisible to the average person who didn’t know to look. (This isn’t to ignore the obvious artistry of tags, just an exploration into the reasons why stencils have been almost overlooked). Many businesses use stencils for their logos or on buildings, and stencil artists can carefully use this authoritative form to create works of art and protest. Today, the stencil remains an avenue of protest for anonymous, usually individual artists, although popular figures like Banksy complicate and elaborate on what it means to be an anonymous stencil artist who sells in museum art shows. Today, the medium of a stencil has entered into a new historical arena, one that operates within the dominant cultural hierarchy. Yet even in a small college town like Eugene, Oregon, the stencil serves as an ant-war protest within artistic images. The stencil’s clean aesthetics allow artists to “blend in” with everyday corporate insignia, to “hide in the light,” thus giving the stencil the ability to appropriate and offer social and political protest.
Dynamic Street Art 